Tear Me Away (Desert Wraiths MC Romance)

By: Amy Kiss

Katie

Tonight’s just another night.

I studied myself in the bathroom mirror. The lights were off and under the moon’s shine, I look haunted. Like one of those old Victorian portraits of young women, now long dead. My face was pale, smooth and framed with luscious sweeps of dirty blonde hair that looked darker in the night. Lovely, if I could be honest. But my eyes seemed fixed somewhere else, even when I was looking right at myself. Like my true self was still some place far away.

I thought of my friend Sandy and managed a smile that reached my eyes. With that, the full package wasn't all that bad. Solid B+. Not that I was going to let myself be graded tonight.

I walked back through the warm but empty townhouse, breathing in these last moments of silence.

Just another night, I told myself again.

It wasn't though. If it was, I'd be curled up on my couch with something colorful and funny on the TV. Maybe Sandy would be lounging on the far end. The only commotion would be us laughing our butts off.

Sandy was on her way over tonight, but we weren’t staying. She'd convinced me to leave my cave, for nothing less than a bar on the outskirts of town. A little bit of danger before sinking into the routine of a new semester of classes. That was her pitch, and after the hundredth time hearing it, I'd agreed.

Blast some music on the way there. Grab a few drinks. Check out a few hot guys and be back safe and sound by midnight.

My phone gave me five more minutes. I went to the dining room, and looked up to the picture of my parents. They beamed out at me, and for a flash I could see them seated at either end; the best kind of haunting.

Their ghosts didn't linger like they used to. Another beat and there was just the picture, still as the wall around it.

A long screech ripped through the house, and I nearly jumped out of my high heels. It went off again.

Sandy was early. She was never early. This was an unsettling start to the night. What the hell did she have planned?

I smiled at my parents, grabbed my purse and went out my porch door. Sandy was leaning across the passenger seat, waving madly. As if I was deaf and had just stumbled out here by accident.

I took a deep breath. I’d be back to all this soon enough.

It was just another night.

I started down the porch.

Ghost

Tonight was the night.

The desert air washed hot over me. I revved my faithful steed and cut through it even faster. Sand skittered across the road, a ghostly veil over my path. It didn't matter. I knew exactly where I was headed. This desert was home. Hell, I'd spent all my life in some desert or another. Here, Afghanistan, North Africa - one and the same.

I checked my mirror, and saw the proud forms of my club brothers perched on their own choppers. Thick maned faces, stern and ready. One after the other.

I saw myself, too. My hard lined face. My blond fuzz of hair, shorn every other week, by habit. And my eyes. Predator's eyes which had come into this world blue, but now went beyond that. They caught the reflections of the moon and glowed like an unearthly fire.

I didn’t know what I was anymore, but I was something that went beyond nature. At night, the whole world could see what I’d become.

Specters - we'd called each other back in my unit. The bikers in the Desert Wraiths motorcycle club weren't so up on their vocab. But they saw it too.

Here, I was Ghost.

Tonight, I was a vengeful spirit. Ever since I'd left service and come back home, I'd told myself nothing mattered. There was no good, no evil. Just the rules you kept and the ones you broke. The sort of thing you tell yourself to let go of years of discipline and run with a 1% biker gang. Selling drugs. Sleeping with girls who just wanted a discount on product. Dishing violence in the name of profit.

Not this night though. Tonight all my training, all my service, all that I had learned would go into dealing with a man whose rules I could not abide. Whose rules should not be abided. They dealt pain and suffering to those who had already given up everything. After months of aimless days, drunken evenings and haunted nights, I finally had a chance for redemption. I remembered that I needed redeeming at all.

This night, I had purpose.

We turned a hill, and the city emerged, glowing below the star speckled sky.

Tonight was the night I would find myself again.

I revved once more and we roared on toward the twinkling lights below.